"It's huge," Walker says. "Never mind Roger Penske, but look at Marlboro. Those guys are going to support their involvement naturally and that is advertising and the series really needs it. It's not only money being spent in IRL, it's that much less money being spent in CART.
"There is no doubt, Chris Pook has a difficult job. I don't think he one little bit underestimates his job. He has to stop the slide, and I think he will. He has to get the people in there to start focusing on building the series back up. He can't look back. He can't look at it and say, 'Well, God, we may as well stop racing because Marlboro and Roger Penske are no longer in the series. You have to move on."
Cal Wells was a team owner in CART from 1996-2000. In 1999, Wells decided to start a NASCAR Winston Cup team that began competition in 2000 with former CART driver Scott Pruett as his driver. That same season, Wells got his only CART victory when Christiano da Matta drove to victory at Chicago Motor Speedway.
Wells would ultimately close his CART team at the end of that season when da Matta left for Newman-Haas Racing. Today, Wells runs the Winston Cup team with Ricky Craven driving the Tide Ford Taurus. The combination captured the first Winston Cup win for the team owner and driver at Martinsville Speedway last October.
Wells, a native of Southern California, believes Pook can help stop the downward spiral that has adversely affected the series in recent years.
"I think it would have been an awful lot better had he come a year ago," Wells says. "There was a lot more to work with then. Maybe they could have saved their relationship with Team Penske and Marlboro and maybe they could have saved some of the tracks that were important to the heritage of CART. Michigan is huge."
Michigan is one of the tracks Penske owns. The track has been dropped from the CART schedule.
"There is a loyalty issue," Wells says. "I understand it's a public company and all of that. I just think there are a lot of things that Chris Pook, having operated as a team owner, promoter, track developer, and sponsor hunter, would have been better suited than Joe Heitzler to intimately understand all of those issues. Had he been able to jump into it 12 months earlier, there are a lot of relationships I think he could have saved. I think Chris' credibility will carry him a very long way."
Switching Sides
CART team owner Chip Ganassi, who owns a two-car NASCAR Winston Cup team that features Sterling Marlin and Jimmy Spencer as the drivers, may be the next to follow Penske to the IRL. As the lead team for Toyota in CART, Ganassi is expected to join the IRL in 2003 when Toyota moves to that series as an engine supplier, building the IRL spec 3.5-liter, normally aspirated engine.
CART has adopted a similar engine that will begin competition in 2003, but has yet to sign any engine suppliers. Honda was against such an engine and announced late last season it will leave the series at the end of 2002. Ford offered to produce a spec engine for the entire series, but wanted a turbocharged formula rather than normally aspirated.
Ganassi was the first major CART team owner to go back to the Indianapolis 500 in 2000 and enjoyed instant success. Juan Montoya became the first rookie to win the Indy 500 since Graham Hill in 1966.
The next year, Marlboro Team Penske returned to the Indianapolis 500 with Helio Castroneves, giving Penske a record 11th Indy 500 victory. The impact of the victory was significant because Marlboro was unable to sponsor the Penske livery in that event because of tobacco laws in the United States that limit cigarette sponsorship to one series. Because the team was in CART, it was unable to use Marlboro decals in the Indy 500 because it was part of the Indy Racing League.